Four Player JAMMA Cabinet by Jeffsgames, 1998

Page content originally published 1/27/2004 (Project Completed 1998)

I’ve had a number of requests over the last few years to describe in better detail how I made this cabinet. It’s a great project and was a lot of fun to do. It’s also one that I can continue to make more adapters to have more games to play in it.

How Did I Start?

I had a small bulk buy years ago of 5-6 games. It was one of my first buys, and so I was a bit excited to get what I could. OK, I still act that way today even after collecting for about eight years. Anyway, since I had a couple cabinets that were in bad shape and not worth keeping I thought I’d try to build a nice four player cabinet. Didn’t have the money for a dedicated 25" model, and I thought it would be a fun project. I had a horizontal JAMMA cabinet that I sold to someone to get some cash for this buy so I didn’t have any cabinet to play JAMMA games in at the time.

The Anatomy of a Control Panel

As I was brainstorming the design of the cabinet and control panel, I listed out the games that I knew I would want the cabinet to play properly. The list ended up being pretty diverse and added some complication to the project. I wanted to play Street Fighter 2 and possibly other fighting games in it (2 joysticks/6 buttons each). I knew Smash TV was the biggest priority (4 joysticks/no buttons). And of course, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and NBA Jam (4 joysticks/2-3 buttons each). I decided to arrange the control panel as you see in the following pictures. The key design factors on it are that the left and right pairs of joysticks had to be on the same horizontal axis so Smash TV could be played properly. It is a two player game that uses two joysticks per player. The left joystick moves the player, the right joystick fires in eight directions – just like Robotron! I also needed three buttons per joystick "station" for four player games. Finally, I needed two stations with six buttons each, preferably in the center of the panel. No easy task!

To make such a versitle control panel, I took an idea from the console collecting days. Console games solved this problem by having a variety of controllers that could be purchased and used to play specialized games. Coleco had the Turbo controller, and the trackball controller. Atari had keyboard controllers, light guns, and other types of controllers. I didn’t want to make multiple control panels, so I decided to make multiple controllers in one control panel. From that idea I make four "controllers" – two single joystick, six button controllers, and two single joystick, three button controllers. I wired them each up to a male db15 connector like those found on PC controllers, all using the same wiring configuration. I adapted the JAMMA harness in the cabinet to match up to this configuration by wiring in Player One and Player Two db15 female connectors. This design worked well with the first three buttons of each controller for Players One and Two, which is in the JAMMA standard. As for the additional players or buttons, I would have to come up with some adapters to fill out the inputs. More on that below. With the "controllers" interchangable to the JAMMA harness, I’m able to play any game from any station that has the correct number of buttons just by plugging that station into the JAMMA harness. Pretty simple, huh?

Here are a few pictures and illustrations of the parts and wiring scheme I used. I used "solder cup" connectors, and plastic connector hoods, mainly because they were the lowest cost. A great place for these is Cyberguys.

Here’s the pinout for the db15 connectors I used as a standard. Note that the two controllers that only have three buttons do not use pins 8-10. Below are pictures of the parts I used.

To build the cabinet I used the side panels from an old Kangaroo cabinet that I had. The cabinet was falling apart and not worth saving. Ended up being pretty easy to do. It was shaped like it was to make it easier to construct and to fit a High Impact control panel overlay I picked up for it. I would rather have a different final shape, but it seems to work fine. Still a bit cramped when four adults are playing NBA Jam together, but not too bad.

As you can see from the picture above, it ends up being a rat’s nest of wiring. The next time I make a panel there are a couple things I’d do differently. First, I would add "coin buttons" to the bottom side of the CP instead of the front of the cabinet above the coin door (see picture and section below). Second, I would solder the wires directly to the switches instead of using crimp blade connectors. Finally, I would use longer runs of wire and route them along a common path to clean up the mess and to make the plugs able to reach farther from the control panel to ease attaching the panel to the cabinet.

Prepare Cabinet

The cabinet that I used was an old Stern cabinet that was in the style of Tutankham. Not sure what the original game was that was in the cabinet. It was a rough conversion to an Exerion that did not work. I stripped the cabinet down, cleaned it out, and primed and painted it. I bought a set of NBA Jam Tournament Edition artwork from RGVAC a while ago, so I decided that a red cabinet would look really cool with the artwork. Got a High Impact CPO to put on that actually looked really cool with the NBA Jam graphics.

One note about the cabinet that makes this such a great multi-game cabinet – it has PCB access from the front of the cabinet!

Since I knew that many of the games that would be played in this cabinet are the classic "quarter eater" games like TMNT, I put credit buttons on the front of the cabinet above the door. I used red buttons which blend in really well with the cabinet and most people don’t even know they are there.

I then installed a horizontal monitor, a new Jamma harness with DB15 connectors on the Player One and Two inputs, and the NBA Jam artwork. I had to cut a couple notches out of the cabinet the allow the control panel that I built to sit securely on the front of the cabinet. I really lucked out that the cabinet was not front heavy due to the size and weight of the control panel. I do know that I can tip it easily if I do not have a good grip with my two-wheel cart.

Game-Specific Control Adapter Harnesses

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition

NBA Jam

Smash TV

Here’s what the boards look like installed in the cabinet:

Final Thoughts

Well, the cabinet really fits in well with my collection. It can play many of the games that I really don’t have room for dedicated machines. I would still love to get a 25" Smash TV cabinet though!. Really I would say that as a first go, this cabinet came out great. It is very popular when friends come over to play. The control panel is a bit big which causes some difficulty in laying out the gameroom so I can get 4 players around the game. I think that I will probably do another one of these now that I know what I’m doing. Preferrably if I can get a 25" Konami or Midway cabinet to do it in. I would also love to come up with a better looking shape for the control panel. It fits well with the graphics of this cabinet, but I like the angled control panels a bit better.

Let me know if you have any questions or want additional details. I would love to hear if anyone decides to do a similar project. Email Me if you do!